A structural overview of Michael Clayton (Tony Gilroy, 2007) in 8 Sequences. When I watched the film during its theatrical release, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Because of the relatively low budget (an estimated USD$25m) for its production values, Tony Gilroy was able to make some brave non-commercial decisions with his screen story. This didn’t go entirely unpunished, as the Variety …

Question: Can you abbreviate “Mister” into “Mr.” in a film script? Answer: Abbreviations are allowed in character headings (names) and Action, but not in Dialogue. Any spoken words need to be fully printed, to keep an approximate page count/screen time ratio of 1p/min. Question: Does that mean I have to use ‘Missus’ instead of ‘Mrs’? Answer: Well, err… Technically, yes. …

Question: Is it possible for the Inciting Incident to happen in backstory? Answer: Technically, ‘backstory’ is not in the movie. It is the history of your characters before the time the story starts. Because we need to see the Inciting Incident and how it affects the protagonist, it cannot happen in the backstory. However, the inciting incident can happen ‘in …